Keys of Babylon (3 page)

Well, okay, after a couple of years, I left. Disagreement, you understand. Us greens are notorious for knifing one another in the back. And I was knifed. The Cheam place was awarded a Lottery grant and that really messed us up. There was money to pay a co-ordinator. Frankly, it should have been me. Unquestionably. What it created instead was internecine warfare. Divide and rule? Works every time.

Been around, haven't I? Communes, squats. That tipi village in west Wales? Couldn't stand another rainy summer there. Or the ayatollah who ran it. Tarifa? Extreme climate. It's where Africa makes the jump into Europe. But try talking eco-politics with surfers and hang gliders.

Since then I've been writing, for
Resurgence, Grave New World
. Had some luck too, and that's what I want to do now. Writing's giving me the biggest kick I've had in a long time. It feels good.

And that's why I'm in Poole. Canford Cliffs to be precise, looking at how the new money is spent. Down there, in the harbour, are the bankers' yachts. Above me, the bankers' mansions and apartments, their second, third homes. Yes, Canford Cliffs is the place to be. An English Monaco. Paid for out of the credit crunch.

I've done a bit of filming too, with Earth First and others. There's some great indie operations out there. But there would be wouldn't there? Everything's digital. Just point and press. Not like when I started.

So filming is where the story begins. In a way it is the story. Of the film I made once. And the man who made it possible. Because this is his story. Mine will be told another time. You haven't got time for mine.

Ever hear of depleted uranium? DU? Back in 1996 I hadn't either. But out of the blue comes an invitation. A friend of a friend knows somebody. This rich Egyptian, she's a campaigner, a believer. She's trying to get a team together to film in Iraq. I'm like, known to be up for things. Will give anything a go. And I can write, can't I? I'm a journalist? Well, sort of. And I've all the green contacts haven't I? Yes, well... Jonathon Porritt owes me a fiver.

A week later there's blossom all over Queen's Gate. The colour of old bones. My mouth is at a silver intercom. Then I'm in a room lined with portraits of Saddam Hussein. He's saluting. Hand in greeting, hand on heart. In a corner is a TV tuned to the news, but we ignore that because a clerk is matching photographs to papers and then something is being printed in purple ink. It permits me to spend ten days in Iraq.

Two weeks later I'm in a Baghdad hotel room reading a manual on how to work a Sony movie camera. I've got it on charge but the electricity is dodgy. From the balcony I can see the Tigris. The green tigress I call her. I have this feeling I'm already out of my depth. That I could drown in Baghdad.

Well, I say to myself. It's better than the tipi. Beats pissing out of a tree on Twyford Down. There's a knock on the door. It's Fatima, the Egyptian who's paying for everything. Who believes I'm a BBC hotshot.

Max, I'd like you to meet Mohammed, she says. He's our government guide.

Goon, I think. But next thing I remember I'm lying on a divan. I've just quit smoking this najila a yard long, hung with falcon feathers. Mohammed had chosen the pipe specially. You know, I thought I could take my draw. I stayed in Amsterdam's Bar 98 for a while and even the white widow didn't phase me as long as I kept off the wine. But that Baghdad hashish? I dreamed I was that falcon drifting over an ocean of dark stone. A black speck in the endless blue. Or maybe it was a 109 Tomahawk with a nosecone painted like a draughts board. Coming to a street near me, courtesy of McDonnell Douglas. And no, they don't make shortbread.

Then the next thing I recall is I've got the runs and we're filming an hour's interview at the Department of Transport. Still got the complete thing on tape. Mohammed's in the room. Mohammed has set it up. He's our ticket to ride, our official heavy with influence. And when he smokes he tells jokes about Iran and the US. The stupid countries he calls them. Schools? hospitals? We film them. Crowd scenes? Safe on tape. Babylon? I've got Babylon coming out of my ears.

Had this Babylonian party once in a place in Cornwall. Films showing empty temples. Weird creatures on the walls. Euphrates kingfishers faster than Scuds. Look at this, I kept telling the guests. You won't see this again. What you think this is, the Discovery Channel? This is fucking real.

Well, we made our uranium film. Ten hours cut to twenty minutes. So sometimes I think about what we left out. There was this British soldier we interviewed in Birmingham. Depleted uranium victim. His friends said his nickname was Prettyboy. Well, I tell you, Prettyboy wasn't so pretty anymore. They'd given him thirty thousand pounds compo for everything that was wrong with him. Not that the words ‘depleted uranium' were ever used.

Want to know what Prettyboy did with thirty thousand quid? He drank it. That could have been thirty thousand cans of Special Brew. Or ten thousand bottles of bad Rioja. Well, forget all that. Prettyboy cut to the chase. Necked five thousand litres of Krazy Kremlin. In three years. That's why he's not so pretty now. His mates told us they would take him to the Fox and Grapes in Digbeth and ask D U want another vodka? Good joke, eh?

With hindsight, he should have been in the film. With a lot of other material. Anyway, it was shown at CND meetings, a few arts centres. Didn't win an Oscar. But did it make a difference? Of course it did. And still does. If you don't believe that you might as well be a fossil. But as I keep saying, this is not my story. Or Prettyboy's. My story comes later.

So I'm in Poole for a few days, billeted with friends out of town. The Canford Cliffs area is exclusive and I've become used to seeing the same people. But there is one man I notice having coffee on the cliff, surveying the ocean, who is differently familiar. One morning I decide to act. I take my cup to the next table on the patio and look out.

Hello, I say. A decent morning.

The man turns to me. He's puzzled.

How are you these days? I ask.

He looks closely at me then.

Oh, he says finally. Takes him a while, like. I expect him to be embarrassed but he's not.

The last time we saw each other, he says carefully, I believe I was crying. You might think that a difficult thing to admit. But it no longer matters.

We're alive, Mohammed.

He lifts his cup in a brief toast.

Remember that hotel room in the madman's capital, I ask. (I know that's an odd thing to say but in Baghdad everyone told me never use the boss' name. And don't even think of pointing that camera at one of his statues.)

Yes, Mohammed replies. You and your companion laid out the money on the bed. Black dinars I wouldn't wipe myself with. Royal Jordanian pounds that were more like it. But no dollars, my friend. Not a George Washington to be seen. And I needed dollars. All that work I had done. All the special services.

But the government paid you, I say.

Pistachio shells. But to repeat, it doesn't matter now.

How did you get away?

From the insanity? Surprisingly easily.

We order more coffee.

Do you know, says Mohammed. I was in a restaurant in Amman when that fool, the Information Minister, came on television and said there were no Americans. And no American tanks.

What's that then? the journalists asked. There was a Challenger coming down El Rashid Street behind this oaf. A Challenger tank with a barrel long as a palm tree.

Oh, pardon me, gentlemen, says the minister, I have an urgent appointment. And he disappears.

How we all laughed in that café. Or maybe I was still crying, but the coffee was very strong. Yes, that café was an excellent place. There were CIA there, braying and bragging, but I wasn't afraid. Small fry, you see, I was never more than that. My picture wasn't on their screens. Not one of the playing cards, not even close. A different game entirely.

How did you get here? I laugh. Poole!

Mohammed smiles again and looks into the harbour.

I live here, he says.

Now that just blew me away.

And I live well. You must come up to the apartment.

He looks at me tolerantly.

You will remember the museum? I had it opened especially for you and your friend.

It was unbelievable, I say.

Yes, a marvellous place. But walking with you there, something occurred to me. So before I left I paid the museum a visit. And then another visit. By the end I knew every corridor. The storerooms too, the crypts, and what they held.

It was a privilege, I say.

Now Mohammed produces his wallet and from it a plastic wrapper three inches square. Out of this he takes a piece of bubblewrap. Within it might be a dark coin.

It's a stamp, he says. Or a seal. A stamp, a seal.

I look at the broken disc. He doesn't let me touch it. There are designs of antelopes upon it and men who might be hunters.

Pretty isn't it, he smiles. And, guess what?

What?

It is six thousand years old.

He sits back, the bubblewrap on the table between us, the disc catching the sun. It waits like a tip for the waiter.

Such a charming thing. And there is so much more, so much you wouldn't believe. You see, we Mesopotamians are a civilised people. Six thousand years ago there were kings who craved such fine art. When your people were rubbing sticks together, our artists and craftsmen were learning their trade.

You looted the museum?

Loot? Of course not. I went with a friend who knows Nineveh, who understands how Babylon and Ur were built. Who knew what wouldn't be missed and what the country could afford to lose. Oh, we were careful in that. We were scrupulous.

We both look down at the harbour.

You see, says Mohammed, we walked along the aisles of the museum and were the only people there. Just like when you paid your visit. No wardens. No professors muttering or students sketching. And no glass on the floor as there soon would be.

We came to a hall. In a cabinet was a copper mask, a king's head. The king's beard was cut in curls and ringlets. There was a copper crown upon his head. But his lips were a woman's lips, red and royal and alive. I looked at that king in the twilight and thought, yes, I could love that man. For that man is an imperial leader, maybe a cruel man, perhaps a murderer of his people, a sacrificer of children, a lunatic, a psychopath. But here he is; here is the king. After five thousand years, here is the king.

And my hands were on that cabinet and I said we must take this, we must. And you know what my friend did? He touched me on the shoulder. Such a beautiful touch. It explained everything. And the passion passed. And we walked on through the museum and we left Nebuchadnezzar's dragons and the Assyrian magicians with their square whiskers and we took what would not be missed.

Tiny gods. It was only the tiny gods we took. The smallest gods who never really mattered. Do small gods matter? To small people perhaps. We took not the gold gods but the alabaster gods. As tiny as chessmen, those gods. My gods now. And seals like this. Some tiles from Babylon. A sphinx from the back of a cupboard. And a red cheetah that fits my hand.

Because I am silent, Mohammed thinks I am critical.

I saved them, he says. I saved them for the world. Where is the great king now? Where are the lions of Uruk or the golden bulls? Where are the chariots? Where are the tablets with the world's first writing? Gone my friend, gone with the smugglers who lacked my sensibility. Gone with the idiots who exchanged eternity for cigarettes. I sell what I took to dealers who make ten times the money I could ever do. But my tiny gods will be safe in Tokyo or Los Angeles when the rest of it is dust in the street.

Yes, I say. I agree with you. And I wish I had done the same.

And I smile because I remember now a statue of a woman. I had stood before it and seen my mother's face, my mother's 1950s' hairdo frozen in Parthian limestone, the statue's drapes my mother's dressing gown, its inlaid eyes the eyes that would never grow old.

Another time, he says.

You mean for coffee?

No, says Mohammed. It was all another time.

He looks at me then.

Now, he says, you must come up. I want to show you my home.

We walk past a pub called The Nightjar which is opening its doors. I haven't heard a nightjar in thirty years. I was on a dark road once, listening for footsteps behind me. Crossing a moor. I heard it then, the nightjar. An old, old song. A lonely song.

My grandfather used to say nightjars sounded like knives held to a grindstone. In Cheam there was this travelling tool sharpener who used to pop in for coffee. Don't worry, all those trades are coming back. They have to.

Mohammed takes me into the foyer of an apartment block. The deskman calls him Mr Haifa. The lift feels as if it's made of glass, but it's burnished steel. I can see my own reflection, Mohammed's cotton jacket, thin and a pale mauve. Jaeger, I'd say. He was pudgy over there and has put on more weight.